Reading the `New' Literatures in a Post-Colonial Era

Overview

Overview

Essays on the contribution of African, Caribbean, Asian and diaspora writers to 'English' literature.

The 'new' literatures have most commonly been seen as a staging post en route to the current 'post-colonial' era. Yet these literatures and the diverse cultural histories they represent are older than such recent interpretations of them. This collection of essays investigates ways in which we can return to 'reading' these 'new' literatures without falling back on current critical assumptions.

Table of Contents

Introduction - Susheila NastaEighteenth Century Men of Letters: Ignatius Sancho and Sake Dean Mahomed - Lyn InnesNotes Towards Reading the New Literatures in Nineteenth Century Bengal - Firdous AzimVenetian Spaces: Old-New Literatures and the Ambivalent Uses of Jewish History - Bryan CheyetteImagining the postcolonial writer - A GurnahReading the referent: Postcolonialism and the Writing of Modernity - Simon GikandiCaribbean Creole: The Real Thing? Writing and Reading the Creole in a Selection of Women's Texts - Denise de Caires NarainShamanism in Oceania: The Poetry of Albert Wendt - Briar WoodThe Necessity of Error: Memory and Representation in the New Literatures - Dennis Walder